I’ve said for a while that Justin Trudeau wants a spring election. A Friday afternoon funding announcement is one more indicator that The Shiny Pony does indeed intend to send Canadians to the polls for a pandemic election. How he will engineer the fall of his own government remains to be seen.
On December 11th, the Trudeau government quietly rolled out their latest climate plan with a $15 billion price tag, A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy. (Download PDF)
It’s a 79-page document that reads like an election platform, and for good reason – it’s the cornerstone of the Liberal government’s plan on the environment.
“The Liberals are systematically getting their policy house in order, readying themselves for a federal election,” said pollster Nik Nanos.
“This is just another example. They need to make sure that they’re making progress on the environmental file, which is critical to a number of their voters in their coalition.”
The timing of the announcement – Friday afternoon – is odd.
If there is one thing this Liberal government loves, it’s virtue signaling on the environment so why all but bury this on a Friday afternoon?
“The timing is interesting. Usually good news, big announcements, things that you want to make a splash with tend not to be announced on a Friday. That is just not the best day to penetrate the households of Canadians,” said Karl Bélanger, president of Traxxion Stratégies and a former NDP national director.
The Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy plan comes with a staggering price tag of $15 billion – or what would have been called a staggering price tag just 12 months ago.
Today, after hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars were shoveled out the door so fast nobody knows where it all went, another $15 billion in borrowed money is almost a rounding error for Finance Canada.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government proposes to spend these borrowed billions on 64 new measures, including:
- Invest $1.5 billion over three years for green and inclusive community buildings
- Provide $2.6 billion over seven years to help homeowners make their homes more energy efficient
- Invest $2 billion in financing commercial and large-scale building retrofits
- Invest $3 billion over five years in Strategic Innovation Fund’s Net-Zero Accelerator Fund
- Invest $1.5 billion in a Low-carbon and Zero-emissions Fuels Fund
All of this sounds lovely. It really does, but whenever a politician is selling you on their latest shiny object, you’d best check your pockets to see if your wallet is still there.
If filling your wallet depends on the energy industry you’ll find no help here, as the Liberal attack on fossil fuels accelerates under this plan. This is no surprise. The mythical “green economy” is a favourite of left-leaning politicians.
For example, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made news last week for pushing a ban on gasoline-powered passenger vehicles across North America.
I’m not clear why this caused such an uproar because, honestly, Wilkinson is pretty late to the party.
In 2019, British Columbia’s NDP government passed a law banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2040.
Quebec says it will ban them in 2035.
These are delightfully virtuous goals, to be sure, but nowhere in their plans for killing the fossil fuel industry will you find the explanation for how they will solve the problem of an electrical grid totally incapable of handling this load.
Nor will you find them talking of new hydro-electric dams to generate all the electricity needed to power a grid that can’t handle the capacity for all of these ‘zero-emission’ vehicles.
These issues are glaringly obvious, yet nobody appears willing to discuss them.
I have nothing against electric vehicles. I have a lot against politicians who peddle this nonsense while ignoring the two elephants in the room.
Our electrical grid must be rebuilt from the ground up to handle the demand of electric vehicles, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of building the power generation plants required when the green movement opposes them so vehemently.
I’m sure that these problems, like Justin Trudeau’s budget, will simply solve themselves.
There was one good joke in the plan, though, and I was grateful for the laugh.
Justin Trudeau’s failed 2019 election campaign promise to “plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years” is front and centre again.
Trudeau has yet to plant a single tree 16 months after he first made that promise. Now he claims he will spend $3.16 billion over 10 years to plant two billion trees.
Greta would be proud.
The rest of us, well, not so much.
If we’ve learned anything over the past five years, Justin Trudeau is long on promises and short on follow-through.
My bet is 2030 will come and go and those two billion trees will be like Alice in Wonderland – a wonderful fairy tale with no connection to reality.
But Justin Trudeau will use the promise of planting all those trees once more time – in the spring election – and it will probably help elect him to a majority government.
If you see any hope for Trudeau’s defeat, be it in three months or three years, please share it in the comments section below. I could use some good news today.
No one within any of the big three parties seems to really take the environment seriously, even the greens do not answer letters from the sidelines.
To curb fossil fuel production must also mean to curb its consumption.
I don’ t see any desire from the politicians in power over the past 25 years to get a grip on this. When in majority, they have/had the power to accomplish goals. Unfortunately , it doesn’t happen, and the horse has left the gate long ago. in 1995. Per capita Canadians are the second largest emitters and we had the chance many times to lead by example. Liberal Era, Reform and Conservative era, then liberals again, not a substantial initiative undertaken. “one ton challenge” by a comedian a tasteless joke, and Conservatives Rona Ambrose/John Baird ever obstructing true innovative approaches
At the consumer level laws could have been passed that mandated , as in Germany and elsewhere, that all new housing comes with renewable energy additions and feedbacks into the grid, water conserving green-roofs and cisterns, dark sky/anti-light-energy reduction policies,
Northern initiatives that would help our First Nations friends in their struggles for infrastructure and water and economic needs. Health and Living standards. that utilize a green-theme.
All new housing developments and any street repairs anywhere come with alternative self propelled segregated transport corridors, connectivity, bicycles, wheelchairs, electric cycles, etc.. by Legislations and bylaws.
Banning outright all fossil fuel leaf blowers /weedwhackers/power washers, generators, etc and eventually most lawnmowers and have a quality built-in-Canada replacement production for these, and seasonal bans and daily usage time zones 10:00am-4:00 pm twice a month only use-age on fuel powered device.
Consumers must start feeling the reality, our actions can not be predicated upon the here and now myopic needs of our lives but must reflect the future , whether or not any of us have offspring to care for and consider. More than human lives are at stake here.
Diesel… very bad stuff that creates particulates that harm the lungs and chromosomes and settle in polar and glacial regions of the globe and create a nasty increased heat absorbing meltdown. The polar regions are Canada’s and the globe’s free air conditioning system, and we are f’ing it all up.
Other than for military and commercial uses, diesels are generally not necessary in a society and certainly not needed to take a run to the convenience store. Diesels must be phased out of existence.
Where are there any meaningful anti-idling laws?
The all-invasive emergence of ORVs and ATVs and snow-machines in our once pristine and quiet back-country, clean air and solace lost.
Countries that utilize vast windfarms and solar fields LAUGH at Canadians for not utilizing our resources and generous spaces and for not capitalizing on our potential advantages.
Sure, 70 percent of all emissions come from the top 100 corporations/industry companies on this planet BUT we are the end user and it is us that must start reversing our addictive thirst for this fuel.
We could mandate that all northern communities remove their diesel generators that they rely upon for community energy AND WE replace them with mini-nuclear power plants that are removeable/servable, and safe, not unlike those found in nuclear Aircraft carries and Subs.
A hefty environment tax upon frequent non-domestic air-travelling flyers, such as in Austria. And by frequent that would be anyone taking two or more trips a years with a multiyear history of flying often. [ hey.. I haven’t flown in over 30 years so to me two or more flights per year history is frequent! ].
Start soon with fossil-fuel-Bunker fuel commercial shipping , get rid of that poison and do what Arnold did in California and have electrical plug-ins for ships and trucks in waiting in ports to unload and load..
Invest in large scale Sail Technology… this would reduce trans oceanic pollution and if “time/spoilage” is an issue, well then, consider at home in Canada goods , local and change our diet some.. Really… who needs grapes from Peru or mandarins from Australia. [ p.s. over one-BILLION animals got burned in that horrendous Australian fires last year].
Fires, big fires, have anyone here already forgotten BC’s 2017 and 2018 fires and Russia’s 2019/2020 fires.? Smell the smoke?
Plug-ins at the local supermarket and Costco’s for those many idling semi-trailers.
The list of reductions are many and doable, but it seems not one government nor a sizeable segment of society wants to believe in the Math and Science that tells us clearly we are slipping along a devastating trail of human induced chaos and our fossil fuel actions ARE hurting someone some culture some society and many wildlife entities on this planet.
Just looking at the wildlife factor, at age 60+ I can see that the abundance I grew up with no longer exists and the new generations after me do not realize what that abundance was, and much of the loss is directly attributable to habitat loss and logging and resource extractions and pollution and climatic changes.
Can anyone tell me why or honestly ask themselves why since the mid-eighties the writing was already on the wall for the Logging industry that old growth logging must stop, those changing hands of Logging companies every few years have had “their piece of pie” and must leave the rest that remains alone, intact.
Old growth is not about the size of a single tree-species, it is about the AGE of the many species and flora that exists within a landscape and forest.
Just witness the daily carnage of exporting logs/old-growth trucking and shipping out of our BC northern port Stewart… shocking and going overseas.
Our habitat destruction is immense and deplorable with far reaching implications…the excuses and results given by the ‘stakeholders and teacher’s pension plan company, mutual fund groups, foreign investors, real estate developers, etc’ , are not unlike the excuses given by the slaughter-hungry bison and whale killers and shark killers and Krill killers of the past and present.
It is deplorable and destructive..
It can be stopped with Political bravery and nonpartisan consensus and co-operation.
What a load of rubbish Peter.
Bullseye, Colin. Peter … your environmentalism treatise is missing one final word. BAZINGA!
Peter, if more Canadians are duped, as you have been, by all of the codswallop emanating from UN 2030 Agenda, its SDGs and the World Economic Forum, then Canada will be an authoritarian socialist colony of Communist China, under the auspices a global government operated by hucksters and shysters. And despite this global effort to reduce all of humanity to the status of cattle, Earth’s climate will continue to change and evolve every day, as it has always done since the first moment daylight illuminated this third rock from the sun.
“We must free ourselves from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. We must state clearly that we use climate policy de facto to redistribute the world’s wealth.” ~ Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair UN IPCC Working Group III, during an interview in 2010
“New communism is based on all the old communist ideological principles and beliefs, but now uses environmentalism as its agent of change, to completely alter the core values of western democracy and destabilize (demoralize) society.” ~Zuzana Janosova Den Boer (Google her!)
Christopher asked if anyone had some good news or ideas regarding how to defeat Trudeau and his Great Reset agenda.
The only hope for, not just Canadians, but all of humanity, is to not succumb to the virtuous-sounding lies and to rail against the politicians (and their media propagandists) who are profiteering from the subjugation of their populations.
What Arie said!